


Afterglow

by GorseMonster



Series: Far Beyond Paradise Lost [9]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ascians (Final Fantasy XIV), Comfort, Eggpreg, Idiots in Love, Injection Referencing, Intimacy, Lalafell Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Love Confessions, Monstrous Features, Naked Cuddling, Nonbinary Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Other, Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal Spoilers, Post-Coital Cuddling, Shapeshifting, Size Difference, Smoking, These Geese Are Gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:47:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27052183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GorseMonster/pseuds/GorseMonster
Summary: After intimacy of a coloured variety, Nabriales and Ira enjoy calmer closeness while watching a storm.Patch 5.3 spoilers included, please be wary!
Relationships: Nabriales/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Series: Far Beyond Paradise Lost [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1450672
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Afterglow

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to my goose-in-arms, whom without I would not be the unstoppable source of NabriWoL that I have become.

A morning like any other, in truth. The sun rose in the east, though muted by the cover of clouds, and birdsong outside the window silenced by the steady drum of rain and distant rumbling thunder. Air smelling of petrichor, cool and damp.

Indoors though, birdsong was not halted by the sky's concert and cold air - buffered by a nest of blankets as two sat in the open window. Tucked tiredly into protective arms, their hazy gaze watched veins of levin thread across the sky, counting the seconds till the sound reached them. It felt familiar, a memory tickling at the base of their skull.

When the rumble reached them, a smile curled onto their lips as his throat flexed with a pleased, quiet trill. Skin on skin beneath heaped blankets, his fingers cupped and roamed, kneading and teasing glides impressing promises to be later procured. Murmurs of moans and sighs of delight an accompaniment to percussive rain and melodic trills.

For now though, curls of smoke wreathed around the two, heady spiced tobacco blown out in rings from the lalafell’s churchwarden, lifted up for the Ascian to take and puff on, then passed back again. They had once stated they could craft one for him; but as they enjoyed stealing his socks and garters, he enjoyed stealing their tobacco.

Plump grapes were brought to their lips, sharp teeth tearing into them and humming in delight at flavourful sweetness, his own lips parting in desire at each flash of serrated enamel. Talons curled at their waist, sluggish want embering beneath coals all but entirely spent, chelicerae glistening, peeking free from his lips. His thoughts were broken by a soft tittering laugh, hands stroking jaw and smoothing sideburns, small lips kissing the glossy surface of pincers. They tasted sweet, of grapes and unctuous vanilla, and he felt as if he could bask in the worshipping touch of their mouth on him for an age.

Still riding out the afterglow, the lingering heat of his venom, still ornamented with scratches from talons and punctures from stinger, still filled with  _ him _ , marked and debauched and claimed...but tenderness now ruled for the time being.

The sky flashed, the two holding breath for one, two, three, four… And the air rumbled and crackled in their chests. Closer still.

Nabriales’s eyes were not trained on the sky, however. Instead they gazed intently at Ira’s shoulder and arm, uncovered by their blankets. Fingers roamed their skin, pausing at points before drawing a line, scored in white by the trail of a sharp talon. His eyes lit up, smile spreading across mouth to make crows' feet wrinkle. A constellation faded but still there, aurum flecks on skin bearing the same patterning. Linked sparks of sunlight he had named in quiet murmurs while their unsundered body slumbered long ago.

Some constellations had been broken - scarring taking the place of where glints once caught the light. A gentle query, a tap of talon where their skin once carried a star, and a soft kiss of lips and nip of teeth leaving a royal purple in its place. Repairing each his eyes roamed over between puffs of luxuriant smoke, leaving tyrian freckles on scars and pale white scoring to join old stars with those renewed.

“Yer unush’lly quiet, Nabriales,” Ira said, their accent elongating and carrying the ‘ah’ of the Majestic’s title out, voice deepened and muffled by smoke in their throat.

“Oh? I thought you had a  _ distaste _ for my, ah, yes,  _ prattling _ , I think you have called it. Would you like me to speak at length on how much I enjoyed that  _ delicious _ sound you made when I--”

His speech was cut with fingers to his lips, teeth showing and crows’ feet wrinkling with his smile. Chelicerae slipped from the corners of his mouth to grip small digits, lips pursing to dot kisses on tips of fingers. Their eyes lingered on glossy black chitin, hand drifting to caress the slick and lightly textured surface of one, then underneath where it became soft and almost velvety, making Nabriales shiver. Ira’s lips quirked into a satisfied smile at this, turning with a gentle sound of discomfort from aches to kneel up and kiss each in turn before settling on his lips with a slow kiss.

“M’quite aware how you enjoy the sounds I make, bird.”

The pipe was offered again, clasped and held to lightly tinted lips by a pincer, indulgent puffs released as rings, curls and peacock eye feathers.

“Tch. Showoff,” Ira teased, resting against his chest, fingers tracing across bright iridescent feathers that lay flat against his body. Their lips curled into a smile though at the display, watching as the Majestic wove ever more fanciful shapes into the smoke before producing one of a firebird, perfect only for a moment before its ephemeral shape lost cohesion and turned to dissipating curls.

A taloned hand idly slipped down under the blanket, smoothing over scarred and stretched skin at their waist, pads of fingers cradling the light curve of their belly. A sight easily mistaken for something else but in that moment he jealously guarded a growing gilded banquet. The promise of a decadent and sweet nectar; of unctuous creamy vanilla and coconut, mounted by suffusion of almond. Their first clutch had been an ordeal - after all, such a process was never something sundered, unascended beings could ever engage in and  _ yet _ their body had managed the feat. A small clutch, barely more than a snack, and in the week before the first pang had set in they had been so drained they could barely move. Some may have claimed it little more than selfish interest or  _ cupboard love _ , as Emet-Selch had so dryly put it but...when he saw their laden form barely able to even walk, it was simple care for Iosis, for Ira, this new mingled thing of two eras, that made it such an easy thing for him to dote on and care for. To carry and wash, to treat thinning aether, to nest with and spin stories of sorcery and smuggling over spiced tea.

Nabriales never told them of the greatest prize the pirate had pilfered; the heart of a God's champion, right from under Her nose.

Still, when their belly began to swell with another clutch of aether, they refused tonics and mixtures to halt it. He had even  _ insisted  _ despite how he longed to feast on each pearl of gilded essence their body formed. Ira would not hear it, though; instead in the wending, dancing way they spoke when trying to express their own wants, they told him to focus his skills at enhancing this new clutch. For more, for denser. Doses through the day to replenish aether drained from their body to their clutch. An almost clinical session of injecting each sac with his own aether from the barb of his tail. His little monster truly epitomised the preposition; scrawny and small even for their race that even he on occasion felt as if they were no more than a sparrow; easily broken and damaged.

Their scars served as a reminder that they were far from easy to lay low. His own near demise proved it even further. They had not recognised him back then, and now, settled into his arms, almost trilling with comfort and delight, it was hard to believe that it was even the same person he had faced.

“You carry them well,” Nabriales purred, thumb rolling across the lightly defined shape of part of their clutch, making them shiver and press closer to him. “Did you truly enjoy your first in so long  _ that much? _ What a good monster you are.”

They murmured something, cheeks flushed in reddened hue.

“What was that? You must speak up, Ioo~oo.”

“It’s not for  _ me _ .”  Their voice was all but muffled against feathers of his neck, their blush palpable even beneath down.

“Once more, little monster. For whom?”

Their lips brushed against the iridescent black pearl surface of his earrings, the tremble of their breath as they parted to speak.

“For you.”

The lightning that cracked across the sky illuminated eyes peering above blushing cheeks, the red of their right that same hue of glacé cherry red as it had ever been. The first time Ira had given a vulnerable, earnest show of their feelings it had caught him off-guard, though the fact that they had never outright rejected him spoke its own volume before. Over time they had gone from sitting at the opposite side of a table from him, to the seat next to him, to shuffling the seats together, and eventually migrated to sitting on or between his legs whenever possible. Either a hand laid on his arm or thigh, or the gentle weight of their body leaning against his.

“Such  _ dedicated _ service to your king, little sun. But come, you do not mean to imply you do not  _ enjoy _ it yourself, surely? Not after how you sang and sobbed in maddened pleasure.”

Whatever flustered noise Ira made was drowned by the sound of thunder overhead, his mouth opening into a booming laugh that matched the storm. Sight fixated on his gaze until snapping to the side as the cool backs of talons slid across their gravid belly.

“M...maybe a’littl’ bit.”

Ira’s gaze returned to his, cheeks stained ruddy but a glib smile pulling at the corners of their mouth. Small callused fingers stroked along his cheek and jaw, instinctively leaning into the touch and meeting their look. The sky began to tighten and the air flex, in that moment his fingers curled lightly to slow the coursing rivers of pale lilac light, forking across the heavens and casting its glow upon turn both. Droplets of rain glinted like jewels, held still by Nabriales' will. As their head lifted, he could see how similar threads streaked across their face, saline drying on their cheeks. Ira's lips pulled into a smile - a  _ full _ smile - he knew so well, the same adoring gaze he had glimpsed when Iosis thought he was not watching; as if seeing the stars in the sky for the first time. 

This time that gaze was bared to him unmasked; lost in those monochrome memories he barely even registered the pipe being slipped from chelicera to the lalafell's lips. Giving a few last puffs, using the timeless space to craft the shape of a peacock in smoke. Barbed tail arching proudly above train, rows of scuttling feet above kicking thorns.

The pipe embered, the last of the tobacco charred, and was snuffed by a gentle gesture before it was set to the side. The warmth of their body laid against him, fingers tracing lines across his face as rain began to fall and lightning skittered across the clouds once more.

"Dionysus…"

His name,  _ his _ name and no other. Past station and status and title and history, still what he had ever truly been beneath. Ira's lips curled into a smile again, lips parting just enough to show jagged teeth; longer canines catching on their bottom lip. Taloned hands pulled them closer, a soft moan as their waist pressed to his body turning to tired murmurs of pleasure as his lips kissed along the ridges of horns, velvet undersides of chelicerae stroking along the edges.

Quiet settled in the wake of thunder, the patter of rain drumming on the roof and windows. Settled in warmth and comfort, slow breaths and wordless touches and kisses across each other’s bodies, fervour betraying the ravenous passion still aching within even though both remained sore and exhausted. Lips met, jaws cradled, tongues toying over sharp teeth and hard metal with barest of restraint, embers within bodies flickering, throbbing.

“You could not keep up, I promise you that, Io~osis. You are barely able to move and yet you continue to play dangerous games, enticing me so.”

Ira’s laugh rattled in their throat, soft and tired, resting fully against him, supported by one arm around their hips and back.

“I never  _ try _ t’rouse yer interest, handsome bird. You clearly jus’ find me irresistible.”

Something of  _ back then _ mingled with their accent. An intonation, a faint doubling of their voice that held the raspy trill of a dreadful shapeshifter. Nabriales’ free hand laced into their hair, combing out the last vestiges of their plait, long tresses spilling across his arms.

“An accusation I could never hope to deny, nor would I  _ wish _ to.”

Warm chuckles were exchanged, the Majestic’s lips brushing over the ornamented jewel on Ira’s forehead; emblazoned with the mark of Azeyma. They had explained that it was an old tradition amongst Lalafellin, to wear the sign of your guardian deity; a gift from their parents when they were young and one of the few things of them they still had. But they had never found much comfort in it, always relying more on themself than a god.

Ah, but how right it was that  _ Azem _ would be born under their own stars; to rely on themself because that same deity was born of a vestige of themself remembered long, long after the sundering.

Nabriales’ nose gently rested between their horns, closing his eyes and curling around them protectively. Past the smells of sex and petrichor, something else tickled, earthy woods and resinous amber, a pinch of sweet plums and the faint scent of their seeds, rich in the heady scent of amygdalin.

It smelled remarkably like one of the colognes he had once gifted to Iosis before a long trip afield, so they would always rest their head somewhere that smelled of him, in the hopes they would sleep that much sounder away from those they cherished.

"Hades bought it. In Ul'Dah," Ira murmured, lips moving and voice tickling against his throat.

_ Of course he had. _

“Do not tell him I said this but the old man is not without taste. After all, he fell in love with you just as I did.  _ And _ you married him once more after all these years.”

A smile curled against his neck.

“And you as well.”

Nabriales paused for a moment, waiting to see if they would quickly talk back their words. When they did not he slid further down against the wall, perching Ira atop him with slow motions of his hands on their sides, thumbs on their waist.

“As well my spouse should.”

Their small weight rested comfortably on him, legs on his waist, waist on his chest. Their smile told him they knew what they had said.

“Yeh’know. In Eorzea they give’yeh a giant white ‘boco when y’get married. Big enough for two to sit astride with ease. N’two rings that’ll act like tiny aetherytes. Let yer teleport straight to your ‘usband.”

Not that  _ he _ would have such issues teleporting to Ira wherever they may be, on any shard. That gold was unmistakable, even before they had reforged their bonds. But for his little monster to be able to go to him, whenever they pleased, and ride in leisure on a magnificent bird…

Nabriales laughed with the thunder overhead, inclining his head. “Are you  _ proposing _ to me, Iosis?”

_ There _ was the fluster he had expected, the Lalafell burying their face against his chest. Slow strokes of talons soothed them, chin tipped up to look at him, winking at them with a smile. Not one for their mortal traditions, and truthfully neither was Ira; the idea promised if nothing else though, some fun for them to take about as seriously as they took any formality, albeit with a boon at the end.

One talon trailed down along their spine, thumb finding the base of their tail and rubbing along the ridges at its base, savouring how their eyes rolled back and hooded, shivering and melting against his body with a groan. Another slipped underside, squeezing while the other rubbed, drawing that sound into a blissful whimper.

“Dio…” Ira started with a soft mewl, breath hot against collarbones. His fingers slowed, but did not stop, rubbing slow circles on the second ridge of their tail. Small hands gripped his shoulder and upper arm, pleasure-drunk and tired smile meeting a burnt honey gaze. “I love you, Dio.”

It was what they had been trying to muster the strength to say, for a long time from how they would sometimes open their mouth to speak, then talk of something evidently not what was at the forefront of their mind.

Nabriales’ fingers stopped, drawing them close to press lips to theirs fervently, hungrily. They did not need to  _ say _ such words as all of their actions would nothing short of  _ scream _ them. But they had swallowed those nerves to anyway, and for that, such a thing should be rewarded. Soft, warm Hyur fingers cradled their jaw, breaking the kiss with a smile.

“I love you too, Charon. Even when I did not remember, I knew.”

Ira was pleased with that. Of their own bravery, of hearing a name they could  _ understand _ and knew was theirs. They both knew, but rarely said, yet regardless, it was good to hear.

Rain crackled on the windows and drummed on the roof, making a soothing din as the Lalafell hummed in pure contentment, low birdsong trills as the two laid happy to ride out the remains of the afterglow.

**Author's Note:**

> As if Ira would not have the same adoration for a terrible horny Ascian that Iosis did. Will I explain how they ended up reunited?  
> ...  
> Maybe!


End file.
